A Tramp's Wallet Part 9

The butcher has forgotten his dignity, and joins vigorously in every chorus. At this crisis Louise gracefully retires, leaving us to our replenished bowl.

"My friends!" shouts the student, mounting on a chair, "listen to me for a moment." And then he plunges into an eloquent discourse upon the beauties of fraternity, and the union of nations, concluding his harangue by proposing a "Lebe hoch" to Alcibiade and myself. Alcibiade is decidedly the lion of the evening, and bears his honours gracefully, like a well-tamed creature. "Se sollen leben! Vivat ho-o!" it roars in our ears, and amid its echoes we duly acknowledge the compliment.

"That's beautiful!" exclaims the student, whose name, by the bye, is Pimblebeck. "And now grant me one other favour. Thou Briton, and thou son of France, let us drink brotherhood together. What say ye? Let it be no longer 'you' and 'yours' between us, but 'thou' and 'thine.'"

Having reached the affectionate stage of exhilaration, we enter at once into the spirit of the proposal, and each in his turn, gla.s.s in hand, locking his arm in that of the enthusiastic Pimblebeck, drinks eternal friends.h.i.+p: to love truly; to defend valiantly; and to address each other by no other t.i.tle than that of "thou" and "thee" for the rest of our lives.

I confess to a certain obliviousness here; a mental haze, amid which the mingled airs of "Rule Britannia" and the "Ma.r.s.ellaise" float indistinctly. But above all, and through all, with terrible distinctness, tones the voice of Pimblebeck; his boyish form dilated into the dimensions of a Goliath, as he pours forth the words of a Prussian revolutionary song, some few of which stand out in letters of fire in my memory still, thus:-

"Prinzen vom Land hinaus, Denn kommt der Burger Schmaus; Aristokraten Werden gebraten; Fursten and Pfaffen die werden gehangt!"

"Drive out the prince and priest, Then comes the burger's feast; Each aristocrat Shall broil in his fat, And n.o.bles and bigoted bishops be hanged."

CHAPTER XIII.

FAIR TIME AT LEIPSIC.

From Berlin to Leipsic by rail, in an open carriage, is not the most interesting journey in the world. Whirr, whizz, burr! away we hum through the keen Spring air, between pleasant banks and dark fir-woods, not very rapidly indeed, for we travel under government regulations, but pleasantly enough if it were not for the sparks and the dust. There are few objects of interest on our route, till we perceive the towers of Wittenberg rising out of the hollow on the left, and we are at once buried in a dream about the simple monk of Eisleben, who, in his struggle against the papal authority, grew into the gigantic proportions of a Luther.

At Kothen we change carriages, for we are on the Saxon frontier. With a snort and a roar, we start upon our journey over the dull waste, which can be described in no better way than by the single word repeated: sand, sand, sand. And now it comes on to rain, and my thin blouse is but a sorry shred to withstand the cold, dead drizzle. By degrees the heavy night clouds wrap themselves round us, fold by fold, till we see the engine fire reflected on the ground like a flying meteor; and the forms of lonely trees on the roadside come upon us suddenly, like spectres out of the darkness.

"Have you a lodging for the night, friend?" inquires a kind voice near me, speaking to my very thoughts.

"No. I am a stranger in Leipsic."

"And your herberge?"

"I know nothing of it."

The inquirer is a little man with a thin face, and a voice which might be disagreeable, were it not mellowed by good nature. He tells me, then, that he is a jewel-case maker, and has no doubt that I shall find a ready shelter in the herberge of his trade till the morning, if I am willing to accept of it. It is in the Little Churchyard. In spite of this ominous direction I shake the good man heartily by the hand, and, although I lose him in the darkness and confusion of the railway-station, cling mentally to the Little Churchyard as a pa.s.sport to peace and rest. I don't know how it is that I escape interrogation by the police, but once out of the turmoil of the crowd, I find myself wandering by a deep ditch and the shadowy outline of a high wall, seeking in vain amid the drizzling mist for one of the gates of the city. When almost hopeless of success, a welcome voice inquires my destination; and, under the guidance of a worthy Saxon, I find myself in Kleine Kirche Hof at last. There is the herberge in question, but with no light-welcoming sign!-for it is already ten o'clock, and its guests are all in bed. Dripping with rain, and with a rueful aspect, I prefer my request for a lodging. The "vater" looks dubiously at me out of the corner of one eye, till, having inspected my pa.s.sport, he brightens up a little, and thinks he can find me a bed, but cannot break through the rules of his house so far as to give me any supper. It is too late.

Lighting a small lantern he leads the way across a stone-paved yard, and, opening one leaf of the folding-doors of a stable at its upper end, inducts me at once into the interior. It also is paved with stones, is small, and is nearly choked up with five or six bedsteads. The vater points to one which happily is as yet untenanted, and says, "Now, make haste, will you? I can't stop here all night." Before I have time to scramble into bed we are already in darkness, and no sooner is the door closed than my bed-fellows, who seemed all fast asleep a moment before, open a rattling fire of inquiries as to my parentage, birthplace, trade, and general condition; and having satisfied all this amiable questioning we fall asleep.

We turn our waking eyes upon a miserable glimmering which finds its way through the wooden bars of our stable-door; but it tells us of morning, of life, and of hope, and we rise with a bound, and are as brisk as bees in our summary toilet. With a dry crust of bread and a cup of coffee, we are fortified for our morning's work. I have a letter of introduction upon Herr Herzlich of the Bruhl, at the sign of the Golden Horn, between the White Lamb and the Bra.s.s Candlestick. Every house in Leipsic has its sign, and the numbers run uninterruptedly through the whole city, as in most German towns; so that the clown's old joke of "Number One, London,"

if applied to them, would be no joke at all.

I leave the gloomy precincts of Little Churchyard, and descending a slight incline over a pebbly, irregular pavement, with scarcely a sign of footpath, arrive at the lower end of the Bruhl. There is a murmur of business about the place, for this is the first week of the Easter Fair, but there are none of those common sounds usually a.s.sociated with the name to English ears. No braying of trumpets, clas.h.i.+ng of cymbals, or hoa.r.s.e groaning of gongs; no roaring through broad-mouthed horns, smacking of canva.s.s, or pattering of incompetent rifles. All these vulgar noises belonging to a fair, are banished out of the gates of the city: which is itself deeply occupied with sober, earnest trading.

Leipsic has the privilege of holding three markets in the year. The first, because the most important, is called the Ostermesse, or Easter Fair, and commences on Jubilee Sunday after Easter. It continues for three weeks, and is the great cloth market of the year. The second begins on the Sunday after St. Michael, and is called Michialismesse. It is the great Book Fair, is also of three weeks' duration, and dates, as does the Easter Fair, from the end of the twelfth century. The New Year's Fair commences on the First of January, and was established in fourteen hundred and fifty-eight. Curiously enough, the real business of the Fair is negotiated in the week preceding its actual proclamation; it is then that the great sales between manufacturers and merchants, and their busy agents from all parts of the continent, are effected, while the three weeks of the actual Fair are taken up in minor transactions.

No sooner is the freedom of the Fair proclaimed than the hubbub begins; the booths, already planted in their allotted s.p.a.ces-every inch of which must be paid for-are found to be choked up with stock of every description, from very distant countries: while every town and village, within a wide radius, finds itself represented by both wares and customers.

It is not, however, all freedom even at fair time. The guild laws of the different trades, exclusive and jealous as they are, are enforced with the utmost severity. Jews, in general, and certain trades in particular,-shoemakers, for example,-are not allowed the same privileges as the rest; for their liberty to sell is restricted to a shorter period, and woe to the ambitious or unhappy journeyman who shall manufacture, or expose for sale, any article of his trade, either on his own account or for others, if they be not acknowledged as masters by the Guild. Every such article will be seized by the public officers, deposited in the Rathhaus, and severe punishment-in the shape of fines-inflicted on the offender. The last week of the Fair is called the pay-week; the Thursday and Friday in this week being severally pay and a.s.signation days. The traffic at the Easter Fair, before the establishment of railways, was estimated at forty millions of dollars, but since, by their means, increased facilities of transit between Leipsic and the two capitals, Berlin and Dresden, have been afforded, it has risen to seventy millions of dollars, or ten millions five hundred thousand pounds sterling.

In the meantime, here we are in the Bruhl, a street important enough, no doubt, so far as its inhabitants and traffic are concerned, but neither beautiful nor picturesque. The houses are high and flat, and, from a peculiarity of build about their tops, seem to leer at you with one eye.

Softly over the pebbles! and mind you don't tread on the pigeons. They are the only creatures in Leipsic that enjoy uncontrolled freedom. They wriggle about the streets without fear of molestation; they sit in rows upon the tops of houses; they whirl in little clouds above our heads; they outnumber, at a moderate estimate, the whole human population of the city, and are as sacred as the Apis or the Brahmin bull. As we proceed along the Bruhl, the evidences of the traffic become more perceptible.

Square sheds of a dingy black hue line one side of the way, and are made in such a manner, that from being more closed boxes at night, they readily become converted into shops in the daytime, by a falling flap in front, which in some cases is adjusted so as to perform the part of a counter. These booths form the outer depositories of the merchandise of the fair, and are generally filled with small and inexpensive articles.

The real riches acc.u.mulated in Leipsic during these periods, are stowed in the ma.s.sive old houses: floor above floor being filled with them, till they jam up the very roof, and their plenitude flow out into the street.

The booths, where not private property, are articles of profitable speculation with the master builders of the city. They are of planed deal painted, and are neatly enough made. They are easily stowed away in ordinary times, and, when required, are readily erected, being simply clammed together with huge hooks and eyes.

We have not proceeded half-way down the Bruhl, when we are accosted by a veritable child of Israel, who in tolerably good English requests our custom. Will we buy some of those unexceptionable slippers? In spite of my cap and blouse, it is evident that I bear some national peculiarity about me, at once readable to the keen eyes of the Jew; and upon this point, I remember that my friend Alcibiade, of Argenteuil, jeweller, once expressed himself to me thus: "You may always distinguish an Englishman,"

said he, "by two things: his trousers and his gait. The first never fit him, and he always walks as if he was an hour behind time."

We are at the sign of the Golden Horn. Its very door-way is blocked up for the moment by an enormous bale of goods, puffy, and covered with cabalistic characters. When we at length enter the outer gate of the house, we find ourselves in a small court-yard paved with stone and open to the sky, but now choked with boxes and packages, piled one upon the other in such confusion, that they appear to have been rained from above, rather than brought by vulgar trucks and human hands. Herr Herzlich, whose house this is, resides on the third floor. As we ascend the winding stair to his apartments, we perceive that the building occupies the four sides of the courtyard, and that on the third floor a wooden gallery is suspended along one side, and serves as a means of connection between the upper portions of the house. Queerly-shaped bundles, and even loose goods, occupy every available corner; and as we look down from the gallery into a deep window on the opposite side, we perceive a portly, moustachioed gentleman busily counting and arranging piles of Prussian bank-notes, while heaps of golden coin, apparently Dutch ducats, or French louis d'or, are built up in a golden barricade before him. We pause before the door of Herr Herzlich, master goldsmith and house-owner, and prepare to deliver our letter of introduction. They are trying moments, these first self-presentations; but Herr Herzlich is a true-hearted old Saxon, who raises his black velvet skullcap with one hand, as I announce myself, while with the other he lowers his silver spectacles from his forehead on to his nose. Then, with all sorts of comforting words, as to my future prospects in Leipsic, he sends me forth rejoicing.

Once more in the open street, we pa.s.s up the crowded way into the market-place. A succession of wooden booths lines the road; and many of the houses have an overhanging floor resting on st.u.r.dy posts, which makes the footpath a rude colonnade. Here are piled rolls and bales of cloth, while the booths are crammed with a heterogeneous collection of articles of use and ornament diversified beyond description. A strange knot of gentlemen arrests our attention for a moment. They are clad in long gowns of black serge, and wear highly-polished boots reaching to the knee. Some have low-crowned hats, others a kind of semi-furred turban, but they all have jet black hair arranged in innumerable wiry ringlets, even to their beards. They are Polish Jews, and trade chiefly in pearls, garnets, turquoises, and a peculiar sort of ill-cut and discoloured rose-diamonds.

The market-place is scarcely pa.s.sable for the crowd, and the wooden booths are so thickly studded over its whole s.p.a.ce, as to allow of only a narrow footway between them. Here we see pipes and walking-sticks, enough not only for the present, but for generations unborn. Traversing the ground by slow degrees, we bend towards the Dresden gate, and come upon the country people, all handkerchief and waistcoat, who line the path with their little stores of toys, of eggs, b.u.t.ter, and little pats of goats'-milk cheese. Here is a farmer who has straggled all the way from Altenburg. He wears a queer round-crowned hat, with the rim turned up at the back; a jacket with large pockets outside, a sort of trunk hose, and black boots reaching to the knee. A little beyond him is a band of musicians with wind instruments, in the full costume of the Berg-leute, or mountaineers of Freiberg. With their jackets of black stuff, trimmed with velvet of the same hue, and edged at the bottom with little square lappets; their dark leggings and brimless hats, they look like a party of Grindoff the miller's men in mourning.

As we approach the gates, the stalls and wares dwindle into insignificance, until they disappear altogether; and so we pa.s.s out of the city to the picturesque promenades which surround it. Afar off we hear the booming and occasional squeal of the real Fair. It is not without its drollery, and, if not equal to "Old Bartlemy" in noise and rude humour, has a word to say for itself on the point of decency. It is, however, but child's play after all, and abounds with toys and games, from a half-penny whistle to an electric machine. Leipsic is now in its waking hours; but a short time hence her fitful three weeks' fever will have pa.s.sed away, and, weary with excitement, or as some say, plethoric with her gorge of profits, she will sink into a soulless lethargy. Her streets will become deserted, and echo to solitary footsteps; and whole rows of houses, with their lately teeming shops, will be black and tenantless, and barred and locked in grim security. The students will s.h.i.+ne among the quiet citizens; the pigeons will flap their wings in idleness, and coo in melancholy tones as they totter about the streets; and the last itinerant player (on the flageolet, of course) will have sounded his farewell note to the slumbering city.

CHAPTER XIV.

DOWN IN A SILVER MINE.

The sojourner in Leipsic, while strolling through its quaint old streets and s.p.a.cious market-place, will be attracted, among other peculiarities of national costume, by one which, while startling and showy, is still attractive and picturesque. The wearer is most probably a young man of small figure and of pallid appearance. He is dressed in a short jacket, which is black, and is enriched with black velvet. The nether garments are also black. His head is covered with a black brimless hat, and a small semicircular ap.r.o.n of dark cloth is tied, not before, but behind.

This is one of the Berg-leute, mountain people; he comes from the Freiberg silver district, and is attired in the full dress of a miner.

Doubtless, these somewhat theatrically attired mountaineers hold a superior position to the diggers and blasters of the earth. The dress is, perhaps, more properly that worn in the mountains, than that of the miners themselves. Still, even their habiliments, as I afterwards learned, are but a working-day copy of this more costly model; and the semicircular ap.r.o.n tied on behind, is more especially an indispensable portion of the working dress of the labouring miner.

From Leipsic, the mines are distant about seventy English miles. We-who are a happy party of foot-wanderers bound for Vienna-spend three careless days upon the road. Look at this glorious old castle of Altenburg, gravely nodding from its towering rock upon the quaint town below. It is the first station we come to, and is the capital of the ancient dukedom of Saxon-Altenburg. Look at the people about us! Does it not strike you as original, that what is here called modest attire, would elsewhere be condemned as immoral and ridiculous? Each of the males, indeed, presents an old German portrait, with short plaited and wadded jacket, trunk breeches, and low hat, with a rolled brim. But the women! With petticoats no deeper than a Highlandman's kilt, and their legs thus guiltless of shoes or stockings, the bust and neck are hideously covered by a wooden breastplate, which, springing from the waist, rises at an angle of forty-five degrees as high as the chin; and on the edge of it is fastened a handkerchief, tied tightly round the neck. A greater disfigurement of the female form could scarcely have been devised. Yet, to these good people, it is doubtless beauty and propriety itself; for it is old, and national.

Through pretty woods and cultivated lands; beside rugged, roadside dells, we trudge along. We halt in quiet villages, snug and neat even in their poverty; or wend our way, in the midst of suns.h.i.+ne, through endless vistas of fruit-laden woods, the public road being one rich orchard of red-dotted cherry-trees: purchasable for a mere fraction, but not to be feloniously abstracted. Through Altenburg, Zwickau, Oederon, and Chemnitz; up steep hill paths, and by the side of unp.r.o.nounceable villages, until, on the morning of the fourth day, we straggle into Freiberg.

Freiberg is the walled capital of the Saxon ore mountains, the Erzgebirge; the centre of the Saxon mining administration. One of its most s.p.a.cious buildings is the Mining Academy, which dates from 1767.

Here are rich collections of the wonderful produce of these mountains; models of mining machines, of philosophical and chemical apparatus; cla.s.s and lecture rooms, and books out of number. Here Werner, the father of geology, and Humboldt, the systematiser of physical geography, were pupils. The former has bequeathed an extensive museum of mineralogy to the Academy, which has been gratefully named after its founder, the Wernerian Museum.

Freiberg holds up its head very high. The Mining Academy stands one thousand two hundred and thirty-one feet above the sea, although this is by no means the greatest alt.i.tude in the long range of mountains, which form a huge boundary line between the kingdoms of Saxony and Bohemia.

The general name for the whole district is the Erzgebirg-Kreis-the circle of ore mountains-and truly they form one vast store of silver, tin, lead, iron, coal, copper, and cobalt ores; besides a host of chemical compounds and other riches. The indefatigable Saxons have worked and burrowed in them for more than seven hundred years.

We proceed to the Royal Saxon Mining Office, and request permission to descend into the "bowels of the land." This is accorded us without difficulty, and we receive a beautiful specimen of German text, in the shape of a lithographed Fahrschein, or permission to descend into Abraham's Shaft and Himmelfahrt, and to inspect all the works and appliances thereunto belonging. This Fahrschein especially informs us, that no person, unless of the Minerstand (fraternity of miners), can be permitted to descend into the Zechen or pits, who is not eighteen years old; nor can more than two persons be intrusted to the care of one guide.

We cheerfully pay on demand the sum of ten silver groschens each (about one s.h.i.+lling), for the purpose-as we are informed in a note at the bottom of the Fahrschein-of meeting the exigencies of the Miners' Pension and Relief Fund.

The mine we are about to inspect, which bears the general t.i.tle of Himmelsfurst-Prince of Heaven-is situated near to the village of Brand.

How fond these old miners were of Biblical designations! and what an earnest spirit of religion glowed within them! There is another mine in the vicinity, at Voightberg, called the Old Hope of G.o.d; but we must recollect that Freiberg was one of the strongholds of early Protestantism, and that the first and sternest of the reformers cl.u.s.tered about its mountains. They have a cold, desolate look; and we think of the gardens we have left at their bases, and of the forests of fir-trees which wave upon some of the loftier pinnacles of these same Erzgebirge.

Nor are the few men we meet of more promising appearance: not dwarfed nor stunted, but naturally diminutive, with sallow skins and oppressed demeanour. How different are the firm, lithe, sun-tanned mountaineers, who breathe the free air on the summits of their hills!

We are near the entrance of the mine; and, entering the neat, wooden office of the Schachtmeister, or mine-controller, we produce our credentials. Having signed our names in a huge book (in which we decipher more than one English name), we are pa.s.sed to the care of an intelligent-looking guide; who, although still in early manhood, is of the same small and delicate growth observable in the miners generally.

Our guide, providing himself with small lanterns and an ominous-looking bundle, leads the way out of the Schachtmeister's office to another portion of the same building. Here are heaps of dark grey "macadamised"

stones;-silver and lead ores just raised from the pit; over whose very mouth we are unknowingly standing. A windla.s.s is in the centre of the chasm; and it is by means of this windla.s.s that the metalliferous substance is raised to the surface in square wooden boxes. Here the dressing of the ores commences; boys cl.u.s.ter in all directions, under the wooden shed, and in oilier sheds beyond that. Here the ores are picked and sorted, washed and sieved, and, we believe, crushed or pulverised, according to the amount of metal contained in them, till they are in a fit state for the smelting furnace. We are not admitted to a minute inspection of these processes; but, under the direction of our guide, turn towards the mouth of the pit which we are to descend. Ere we leave the shed, we pick out a small block of ore as a memorial of the visit, and are astonished at its weight; bright yellow, and dull lead-coloured crystals gleam over its surface; and a portion of the gneiss, from which it has been broken, still adheres to it.

We follow our guide across a dusty s.p.a.ce towards a wooden building with a conical roof; and, as we approach it, we become conscious of, rather than hear, the sweet, melancholy sound of a bell, which, at minute intervals, tones dreamily through the air. Whence comes that sad sound? In the centre of the shed is a square box, open at the top; and immediately above hangs the small bell; thence comes the silvery voice.